Rogue Analyst

A working definition of Secrecy:

Secrecy requires action on the part of a principal or a collective of principals to deny full knowledge or some portion of related information to agents, and third parties. These actions may include denial of physical access to information on the part of agents and third parties, and/or active efforts at deception which may include disinformation or misinformation. If no active methods are used to deny others access to information, but the information remains beyond of the awareness of potentially interested agents and third parties, it is categorized as anonymous, not secret. As stated previously, secrecy requires the principal to take an active and intentional role in the information denial. Secrecy can have an almost infinite number of motivations, and these motivations influence the degree to which a principal attempts to control the information in his possession. A simplified list of motivations include the protection of self interests, a more altruistic protection of an agent’s interests (which may be practiced by parents shielding their young children from knowledge of their sex life), protection of a collective interest, for personal gain, for the gain of an agent, and for a collective gain. Further, it is possible for various permutations of these motivations to exist, and it is possible that more than one can be involved to varying degrees. It be that maintaining a secret works to protect the principal and provides the principal personal gain, or that the partial disclosure of information is beneficial while retaining the rest in secret. In fact, secrets themselves may fall into two different groupings. These are ‘known secrets’ and unknown secrets. Unknown secrets are self explanatory. Known secrets exist when agents know that the principal is in possession of information, and the agent’s actual knowledge of the information may vary in specificity from knowing that a research is being conducted to the area of research to almost everything about the research project except key details. A good example of why a principal may even wish the agent to know that a secret exists would be the codes to the ‘football’. This is the device under the President’s control which would be used to launch US nuclear capabilities should that eventuality occur. The existence of the US’ nuclear capability is known to provide a certain amount of deterrence to potential enemies of the US, but no one would suggest releasing the actual codes to be used to the public. However, known secrets can also have unintended negative effects as when information is released by the government in response to various requests from agents under the Freedom of Information Act, and the documentation released in response to those requests is full of redactions. This may lead the agents to speculate wildly concerning the undisclosed portions of the information and lead to even greater distrust than had the information not been released at all.

Secrecy also carries with it costs, both direct and indirect. Direct costs include the physical security of the information itself, the cost of ensuring that the principal associates are trustworthy, the oversight of principal associates who are engaged in handling secret information to ensure they are performing their roles in keeping with the principal’s interests, and increased transaction costs on the part of principal associates in the transfer of secret information between offices i.e. signing for documentation, security check points, etc take time. Secrecy may also incur indirect costs stemming from among others the inability to readily share information between departments within the organization which can result in duplication of efforts or the loss of creative ideas concerning the subject matter, or to share the information with important associates external to the organization such as suppliers or vendors which may slow productivity.